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Latest Ballmergram Bashes Linux TCO
Phoe6 writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has used the software giant's latest executive email to stoke up Microsoft's fight against the rise of Linux. The 2,600 word missive was titled 'Customer focus: comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX'. In it, Ballmer repeated the key themes of Microsoft's controversial Get The Facts campaign. Zdnet has its report here." Linuxworld also has a story.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release. And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
Whoda thunk that it'd be more expensive to entirely change your infrastructure from Windows to Linux than it would be to simply upgrade to a new version of Windows????? Wow! We should install Windows everywhere!
Who here also thinks it'd be just as expensive to convert from Linux to Windows?
Excerpt from last paragraph of Ballmer memo:
If the evidence at our www.microsoft.com/getthefacts Web site doesn't sufficiently convey the benefits and value of the Microsoft platform, we want to hear from you so we can work even harder to get that information to you.
I can't wait to read the the response to his invitation.
he hasn't figured out that people are starting to see through that 'get the facts' crap.
The bad news is, some people still do believe it...
*sigh*
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
They've stopped calling them "Halloween" documents? But October 31st is so close!
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Security
About three years ago, we made software security a top priority
please... but i think they are starting to see Linux as a viable threat, thus the verbal out crys lately trying to defend themselves
Also worth reading the groklaw article on this, which is available here.
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2004/FIL11 404a.html
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
the number of security vulnerabilities is lower on Windows
WTF??!?!?! how can infinity be lower than anything? Seriously though, lower vulnerabilities? Where the hell did that come from. From what I understand, linux is more secure, unless you purposely open it up or ignore the installs which tell you not to run as /root
... does not make it right.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Ballmer always reminds me of the kind of guy that would bash his head against the boulder repeatedly thinking: "One of these days, it'll give!!!"
Like an over-enthusiastic cheerleader for the Chicago Browns, I fully expect him to wake up one day and realize that he is cheering on a group whose ambition far exceeds their ability to remember the lessons of the past, and expect their past glory to carry them on.
We're tired of hearing your useless FUD.
1. Price of Windows $299
2. Price of Linux $0 to whatever distributor you wish to pay
3. Having the Freedom to use the software you want to how you want to and being a part of a world wide Free(dom) software community: Priceless!
w0uhf
It seems like they think that if they say Windows is more secure enough times it will become a reality. They should put more focus on developing secure software, than simply paying lip service to secure software.
--
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!
I don't. It'd be much more expensive IMO to convert from Linux to Windows. First off, you gotta buy it. Second off, you'd have to hire all new IT staff, because the previous guys would've committed hari-kari in the bathroom. Second, you'd have to figure out how to get all of your applications running again in an environment that is as stable as a drunkard on a fence.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
I am so sick of "get the facts" and "Windows TCO is lower". I am a big fan of windows on the desktop, but it sucks as a server. I contend that anyone who says "Windows is easier to admin than Linux" has never had a Windows problem.
Since Tuesday, my DFS has been totally screwed up and not replicating. With Linux, you'd just look at a samba config file or something, but NOOO, not with AD and MS domains. I totally removed all of my replica sets and spent HOURS on google trying everything under the sun.
We ended up having to call Microsoft and paying $245 for the privilege. Well, in case you're wondering, yes they fixed DFS, but now my SysVol is marked as tombstoned. So yeah, my profiles are replicating, but now my SysVol is about to delete itself. Microsoft is trying to figure out WTF it is trying to delete SysVol and every time you set the flag to 0 it goes right back to one, regardless of whether or not you stop or start the File Replication Service(FRS). We had to totally blow everything away in LDAP with ADSI edit and in the registry under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Drivers\NtFRS and DFS.
Anyway, I hate windows on a server, but you just don't have the same abilities on a Linux domain as you do on a windows domain with windows desktops. We used to have a samba domain, and we're transitioning to AD. I hope Ballmer gets to read this, preferably before my SysVol deactivates and deletes itself.
This message and SysVol will self-destruct in five seconds.
What would we expect of Ballmer? "Okay, okay, I give in, Linux is actually better, cheaper, more stable, faster" and so on? Of course not. He is lying, true, but that is his job (used car salesmen, bow before Ballmer, for he is your god).
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
will be the one that the most people that have to interact with it know it. If on the server, and all the admins know unix that would be linux or unix. If on the server and all the admins know only windows then it would be windows. On the desktop windows will win most (read 95%) of the time. Unless you have a very very techly set of employees then it just might be linux.
how ironic.
^_^
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
And as Yankee Group noted in its Linux, UNIX and Windows TCO Comparison study, "Linux-specific worms and viruses are every bit as pernicious as their UNIX and Windows counterparts - and in many cases they are much more stealthy."
Well they have to be...the simple viruses that invade windows machines wouldn't stand a chance against linux.
Also, they totally ignore to state the fact that the frequency of Linux viruses on Linux is pretty much null.
I think some of the MSies, such as Ballmer, can officially be declared rabid. or at least werewolves in Redmond. (Warren, we need ya!)
What??? The initial change from any OS to any other OS would cost money? Don't they cover this sort of thing in economics 101?
Developers, devel... erk, Security, Security, Security!
Do you like Japanese imports?
I don't think I understand your point. Its expensive to switch from linux to windows or visa versa. So the report says that if you are already a microsoft customer, don't bother spending the extra money it takes to switch. Do you think they are saying that makes Windows a better operating system than Linux? Or are they extending the point too far to imply that starting from scratch, Windows should always be installed? I don't get it.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release. And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
It could be true If you take into account the custom applications that may be running on windows now. If you have to migrate from Windows to Linux you also need to develop those custom applications to run on Linux. May be they are taking that into considerations. But if it is just office applications(Like MS Word) that should not so much costly as there are Free alternatives available and are as (In some cases More) efficient as MS Office.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release.
It's more expensive short-term to switch operating systems than to not switch? Shocker.
And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
And one of them said it would.
Did any of them say Windows was actually better? I doubt it - if any of them had, they would have mentioned it.
Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about Linux.
There are more Windows admins out there. This surprises who?
So you've got #1, which basically says "If you're already running Windows, stick with it!" You've got #2, which says "If you're already running Windows, stick with it!" And you've got #3, which says "Right now, there's more people running Windows!"
Am I the only one who hears an undertone of "Please, please, for the love of God, keep using Windows"?
Microsoft's marketing, right now, is focused entirely on "Don't switch to Linux". Perhaps this is because many companies still use Windows. Or perhaps it's because they can't come up with plausible reasons to switch *from* Linux. But don't worry - we'll be seeing their first attempts in a year or two, I'll wager.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I wonder if their TCO figures include rebooting all your servers weekly to install new patches...
Oh, and let me guess... the Linux vulnerability count includes all issues found in an entire distribution, while the Windows count includes only the base OS. I'll bet we'd get a much more accurate picture if they included IIS, SQL Server, Outlook, etc.
Seriously, this is just the marketroids doing their thing. When the accountants start warning about threats from Linux, we know there's a real threat. Linux is getting mention in the latest annual filing, too.
See what I've been reading.
Sad. Just sad.
:wq
The single biggest reason for the proliferation of open source software like Linux and Apache is that they are free to own. Most Westerners are relatively honest and do not pirate commercial software; the piracy rate is only about 15%. The sheer high cost of commercial software thus creates a market for free software like Linux and Apache.
Now, consider China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong). The Chinese steal what they do not want to buy; the piracy rate is about 95%. In China, there is no market for open source software like Linux, for all software is free. Windows XP is "free".
TCO is not even an issue in China because Microsoft will not support pirated software. Chinese pirates get support for, say, Windows XP from other pirates; the behavior is similar to Westerners getting support from other open source supporters for Linux.
I looked at the Korean translation, and there are bits of English text (like "back office") in the Korean text but those words appear nowhere in the original English text. WTF?
I am reminded when they tried to compare Apache holes with IIS. They only listed the ones on the default IIS but ALL the ones that could affect Apache with all the extras added.
Look I will tell you a little secreat. You know how to tell when a Microsoft employee is lying? His mouth is open.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
One of the hot topics among enterprise IT and business decision makers today is the costs and benefits of migrating enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) from costly, proprietary UNIX environments to Windows or other platforms.
My Linux and Freebsd machines are particularly costly, I should consider migrating probably... On a second thought, I don't have any ERP (in fact I don't even know what it is).
When the opposition starts to use fud and only fud to defend itself it can only mean that it is scared. This is a sign that Linux is gaining momentum and MS will go to any lengths to stop it. The tides are turning. Stay the course and in the end the better OS will win. These are classic tactics used throughout the business world on a daily basis, do not think that this is a personal attack. But also remember that when the enemy is on the ropes, you should do everything in your power to deliver the final blow.
Stay tuned for new sig...
...but when I went to read the article at Linuxworld , the formating of the web page was all over the map.
Now, I'm using Firefox...which I would think Linuxworld...being to promote Linux and such...would be formated in a way that Firefox/Mozilla wouldn't have a tough time reading. Yet, when I open the page in Internet Explorer, everything is fine.
Why is this? What's really going on over at Linuxworld? Is everything over there put together on Linux/Apache and other open source apps?
Just find it interesting...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
you gotta learn how to count
I saw "Oh that one is easy" and expected an explanation of Aleph-1 > Aleph-0.
...This memo was passed around at my firm to the people who handle the MS accounts and all of the sudden their eyeballs took on the shape of dollar signs. Nobody wondered about the debate over the veracitiy of the "Get the FUD" campaign when I brought it up. All they thought about was a way to get a piece of the market research action with MS funding, of course.
Overall, I wasn't tremendously impressed with the email. I didn't see anything that was literally wrong, but parts of it were stupid or misleading or based on third party studies that weren't necessarily accurate. There were also some things that were completely true. If you can refute every single point in that email then you are making stuff up, and you should re-evaluate your arguments to determine which ones are true and which ones are nonsense.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
'k I've gotta ask... how? How does running windows stop people from sending me spam? No really, if microsoft can magically stop the spammer sending me all the shyte I've been getting then I'm all for it. Microsoft Mind Control 2005 here we come. ;-)
Getting Linux TCO news from Ballmer is about as reliable as getting news about Iraq from Dick Cheney.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
What he forgot to mention was that the customer isn't included in the tab list, and if you try to give it focus with your mouse a modal dialog pops up to get in the way.
I depend heavily on M$ products for my paycheck, and have certifications in M$ products. but I am also a realist... there are times that Linux just does the job better.
;)]
I feel that they both get the job done in different ways, and sometimes one is better than the other. We (the team who manage the servers at my place of employment) have been slowly introducing more and more Linux boxes, just because we can do more with the functions we are introducing them for. [Well, that and the fact that the security team is very Windows centric and can't crack these, much to their frustration and chagrin.
However, Ballmers contentions that Windows is just better are beginning to sound more like the ravings of a man demanding that the wind stop blowing.
As for the facts on the website? My college stats teacher proved that you could make the numbers say anything if you try hard enough.
Here I come to save the da... *thud*
I gotta get me a shorter cape.
A quick comparison for complete system upgrades:
CPU: AMD XP1700+
FreeBSD: 3 hours (includes: cvsupping the entire source tree, making and installing world and kernel, running mergemaster), of which 10 minutes of actual console presence is required from the system admin.
Windows XP: 3 days if you are lucky, of which constant presence is required from the system admin since you cannot predict when you will be prompted for what and what exactly is the next step.
Time is money, but forget about money for a second. Do you want to waste your life promoting Microsoft? By wasting your time trying to install, configure and maintain their products, that's just what you are doing. Making your life worth less. Worthless.
As far as updating goes, generally, debian is much easier to update in my experience. Using the packages included in debian (and this is a HUGE number) you essentially never have to worry at all about dependencies.
... unstable. :)
Of course, if you use the unstable distribution, occasionally a package gets uploaded that is a little
But using stable, or even testing, you almost never get this kind of problem. Certainly nothing like the problems with winxpSP2, and of course, the viruses/spyware fun on windows requires far more frequent updating than anything in linuxland.
Anyway, if all your experience has been with redhat, especially if you weren't using yum or apt-get in it, things can be greatly improved.
Yeah, that takes the cake. But it's worded pretty cleverly, dontcha agree? "About three years ago, we made software security a top priority." Notice they don't say they've actually done anything about it, they just say they've made it "a priority". Hell, anyone can do that.
Beautiful piece of marketing doublespeak.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win."
I'd say we're well into Stage 3.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Check out hosting from http://www.1and1.com/. Linux hosting is $4.99 a month; MS Win hosting with the same features is $6.99 a month. I wrote to 1and1 and asked them why Windows-based hosting was more expensive. I was told that in terms of licensing and maintainence costs, Linux is definitely cheaper.
How do you respond to that, Ballmer?
Thank God I'm an atheist!
Clearly this guy has never experienced all of the wonderful automatic dependency checking, rebootless, ease of configuration goodness that is a well made linux distribution. It doesn't even sound like he's tried it.
Knoppix is a monolithic distribution that just works.
Go ahead, try it: knoppix.org
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Latest Ballmergram Bashes Linux TCO
And now slashdotters bash Microsoft/Ballmer
Is this really news?
With an educational discount, Windows 2003 server costs my department $142 (sure, it's more in a commercial environment), I can install it, set it up, run updates on it once in a while, run the baseline security analyzer on it, and forget about it. Give me a linux that does all this in an easy to use manner, and I'll switch. Sure, I could use apt and the others, but it just takes too much time, and you have to worry about various dependencies and what not.
At $142, that's $142 more you have to spend compared to FOSS solutions. What you've described, proved either that your educational institution is filthy rich and caters only for the rich and snobs, or you're just plain lazy.
Most educational institutions, whether state-run or even privately operated (esp. private with visions of education rather than for profit), are almost always tight budget! This is especially true in third world countries! That is why various bodies such as SchoolForge (and their Case Studies), K12OS, Moodle, OpenSourceSchools, KDE Edutainment Project and a lot more others are being founded and.. surprise! Thrives!
Personally, I love the K12LTSP Project. A branch out of the K12OS Project, which when deployed properly throughout the campus, can provide access to all students to high-grade apps in a very stable environment. Access from any terminal in any labs, authenticating via NIS, LDAP or whatever you prefer and access your mail accounts, website or whatever. With backend support tools available such as MySQL or PgSQL and PHP/Perl (okay, maybe that's a bit far out, but I've met 12 year olds who can code!)
Software cost? $0
Will sys-admin for food
Hmmm. Can't everyone here order a free Windows vs. Linux evaluation kit? That would cost them a lot. You can find it at microsoft.com/getthefacts/.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
This is for people who don't think or pay someone else to do it for them. I mean any educated person should know that if you want the truth you look at many different sources. And given that any company would want to check all the viable sources before committing so much money..wait a minute...we are in America? A screw it just buy what popular.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
I read this when it came out, and read it once again now. It is complete FUD.
of note:
They only speak of conversion costs, never upkeep. Conversion is always expensive. Have them look at conversion plus 5 years.
Look at the cost of downtime. They do not mention what the cost is to the core business.
Cost of hardware.
The hardware needs for windows platforms is much more robust compared to platforms for Linux. That's another trick they do... they say, you need P4s and we need P4s... not really. My new server (i.e. jenny's old laptop) is running off of 128 mb of ram and 600 MHz. It is considered overpowered for command line only freebsd.
Their notes:
Few companies know what they're really spending. Only five of the 14 kept detailed metrics - and each of those five found Linux more expensive (5% to 20%) than their current Microsoft environments. => Which 5 companies? Cost is one thing, but what are the potential returns? I wont be running any ecommerce website on IIS. Those credit cards will be jacked so quick.
Preparation and planning activities took 5% to 25% longer for Linux than Windows. What are we planning? => As a counter example... lets talk about active directory migration.
Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about Linux. => Unknown to me, but I bet this is true due to simple supply and demand. However, if Linux had the marketplace and Microsoft was smaller it would probably reverse
All 14 companies said it was difficult finding qualified Linux personnel in the marketplace to support their Linux projects. When they did find third-party help, they had less leverage negotiating hourly rates than with Windows consulting resources. => What is qualified? I every MCSE is not qualified.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
Actually, if you use apt then it resolves the dependencies for you. And besides, you still have dependencies even with Windows -- have you never heard of DLL Hell?
James Tait, Programmer and Free Software Advocate
JID: jayteeuk@wyrddreams.org
Excuse my Ballmerism noobness here, but how can using Linux possibly be anywhere close to 5-20% more expensive than using Windows? I'm saying that based off a little investigation of mine...and that investigation was that I payed a couple hundred dollars or whatever for Windows, and I downloaded Linux for 0 dollars. 0 couple hundred dollars. Maybe Balmer is using some arcane, alien form of math?
probably with the Ballmer psycho dance he does and adds throwing 180 day trial copies of windows 2003 server disks like throwing stars
Pope takes a shit in the woods.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
He's in business. To make money. And he wants to make more of it. The Monkey Dance... "I Love This Company!" Of course he does... It buys him pretty, pretty things.
This t-shirt comes to mind...
Another one bites the dust
Just look at the "security" of the Linux kernel. Users are limited to 16 groups?? Only one group can have permissions applied to a file? And no group nesting allowed?
Yeah, there's a security system I'd be proud of.
You can mod this comment down, but you can't propose a security system like THAT to a company interested in protecting their assets. WAKE UP SLASHDOT.
IHBT. Still:
First off, lots of large companies protect their assets using the standard UNIX security scheme, so that part of your argument is a non-starter.
Further, if you require a more flexible ACL scheme for some reason, you can always use SGI's XFS filesystem, which has had fairly good support for ACLs for quite awhile.
Or use IBM's JFS, which likewise has ACL support.
I believe that there are patches available which will add ACL support the ext2 and ext3.
So, in summary: Plenty of folks get by without problems with UNIX permissions, but if you want ACLs, they're readily available. Go ye forth and troll no more.
FreeBSD. Not only is the entire distribution integrated, but all future updates of all pieces are integrated in the same way.
The posting of this article on slashdot has little to do with informing us (this time, anyway) and everything to do with an attempt at slashdotting microsoft.com.
Click, click, and click again. Send your friends. Bring down microsoft.com, if only for a day!
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
True, a large scale change in either direction would be expensive.
However, no CTO in his right mind ever contemplates large scale change without a compelling reason. I.E. he may have secified Apple Mac Lisa Mac XL and then discovered that Apple and developers abandoned support for the platform. This is a compelling reason.
In reality, a good CTO will consider the benefits of Linux or MS on a project by project basis and weight the TCO (total cost of ownership) over the projected lifetime of the implementation. IBM has discovered that LInux sells well under this reality and is presently training their sales force in selling linux! IBM is doing this BIG TIME with install fests around the country for 1000's of IBM sales people. The upcoming fest in Vegas will have some 1700 IBM sales people install linux on their thinkpads.
Do not look into LASER with remaining eye!
But that aside the reason why I as an IT guy am not impressed by Windows is that it is difficult to administer remotely (when Microsoft shows me a version of Windows that I can admin over a 9600 BPS serial link with a CLI I'll be interested) and the fact that I don't want to be Microsoft's bitch. If I don't like IBM's Linux solution I can buy from HP or SGI. If I don't like Microsoft Windows I'm stuck with it.
Microsoft's history of price increases is also an issue. When Windows NT 3.51 came out I could purchase it for $95 dollars a license at Academic discount, NT 4.0 cost 135 dollars, Windows 2000 and XP are $165. Microsoft will counter that Windows XP is more functional than NT was and that that justifies the extra price, but my hardware is more functional than it was 8 years ago when NT 3.51 came out and it's cheaper, why hasn't Microsoft's operating system followed the same evolution? (that's a rhetorical question, but in case you're confused it's because they have a monopoly) In addition I take all of Microsoft's claims of increased functionality driving software price with a grain of salt as a lot of what those new releases deliver is bug fixes over the prior version.
Even if Microsoft can deliver solutions for the same price as Linux a lot of companies are going to look at Microsoft's recent history and say "Do we really want to be their bitches?" and when the answer is "no", go with that Linux solution.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
You didn't have to do anything except wait 3 hours for it to fucking compile, I'll take apt-get or urpmi anyday. Of course I'm pretty bitter at the moment though because when I tried out gentoo a little bit ago my first emerge world after install(synced and updated portage fine) would always have an error("to many levels of symlimks" if anyone knows howto fix it) 80% through and afterwords emerge wouldnt work. After three installs I just said fuck it.
I think:
simple == good security
So I like the classic Unix security scheme on Linux.
Windows has no equivalent. It's tricky, you can't see what's happening at a glance.
IE doesnt adhere to web standard rules as closesly as OSS browsers, therefore the errors dont make the page look as bad
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Users are limited to 16 groups??
32, I believe. Still, it isn't perfect, and we should perhaps look at ways to improve it.
Only one group can have permissions applied to a file?
Not true. All major Linux filesystems support POSIX ACLs now, enabling you to apply whatever permissions you like.
And no group nesting allowed?
What are the security benefits of allowing this? Personally, I am not aware of any, as I believe whether it is allowed or not the systems are actually equivalent -- it is merely an implementation detail that should be ironed out by any reasonably well written management system.
You can mod this comment down, but you can't propose a security system like THAT to a company interested in protecting their assets. WAKE UP SLASHDOT.
Even without ACLs, it is more than adequate for 99% of companies. Hell, most of them wouldn't want to spend the admin time required to manage anything more complex.
[EOM]
--- Ban humanity.
Converting from Windows to Linux really does cost more .. for Microsoft.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
So in that light we should keep our gas guzzling suvs, and screw the environment. It will just cost to much money to change.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
"Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about Linux."
Google Linux...then Google windows....LOL
"A number of third-party reports have questioned how safe the Linux platform really is. For example, a recent independent study by Forrester, Is Linux More Secure than Windows?, highlighted that the four major Linux distributions have a higher incidence and severity of vulnerabilities, and are slower than Microsoft to provide security updates."
Slower??? lol
This article realy was just to much. Lets help our customers better determine the right solution!!!! LOL go get 'em microsoft
what?
Pro-Linux readers bash anti-Linux FUD by spreading... more FUD of their own.
Can't anybody take the high road here?
Coming soon - pyrogyra
It seems like they think that if they say Windows is more secure enough times it will become a reality
This really works... for a recent example look no further than WMD... everyone suspected that it was bogus, but found the media campaign somehow compelling. Sad to say, marketting is very powerful
They should put more focus on developing secure software, than simply paying lip service to secure software.
It would be very naive to believe that a company (whose loyality is to shareholders), will sit still on such a burning issue. They have finally realized that they most do this, but it will take years. In the mean time, lip-service it all they can offer.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Presumably they replaced old servers with new ones, so, say, 4 old i386s with 2 new Athlons ? Hardly surprising it is ?
Any one got any old pics of Ballmer, I'd like to see how much his nose has grown by this last year.
In terms of talking about the operating system itself, Microsoft's statements come across as the same FUD we'd expect. However there is one thing I noticed in this letter which caused me to think a bit...
"All of the major Linux vendors...have begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification."
What this means I think is that Microsoft can't compete with the *operating system itself* on technical merit, and they know this. However, what it sounds like they're realising that they *can* do is exploit corporate ambivalence about Linux based on the major distributor companies' pricing structures.
I understand that in order to make money with Linux, it's always been about the services. What I've also heard talked about several times recently though is how greedy people think Red Hat in particular are becoming. If this is true, RH and the other companies IMHO need to be careful.
Microsoft as I said know they cannot compete with Linux based purely on technical merit. But if Red Hat and the other companies introduce overinflated pricing structures with regards to the services, this will largely erradicate the "free as in beer" element of Linux, at least as far as the corporate mind is concerned. If it gets to the point where Microsoft can compete based on *initial price*, (and no, I'm not talking about ongoing license fees here...I'm talking about the price of the *initial* contract/box/whatever) then they could even afford to cease caring about people knowing that Linux is a technically stronger solution than Windows. All they need to do is sell someone on the idea that an *entry* price is cheaper than the initial price one of the Linux companies is charging. Based on what I've heard about Microsoft's contracts, I'm guessing they could very easily do this.
1) Offer a corporation an initial deal comparable to the Linux vendors in terms of unit volume/amount of support, but at a marginally lower price, and of course with Windows rather than Linux.
2) Fill said corp's heads with usual BS about "independent" (wink, wink) surveys/studies and so on to grease the deal.
3) Include a fixed term no-vendor-transfer clause in the contract...basically specifying that they can't migrate for a certain time period. 5 years, 10 if they can get away with it.
4) Once the time period for the Linux "clone contract" runs out, then we're in purely Microsoft time, and can then commence MS fun and profit. Jack up the price for additional support, service packs, bug fixes or whatever, and justify this on the basis that these weren't mentioned in the original contract, or that these are "optional extras." (Even if they are actually mandatory to keep the corp's machines functioning) Use extra context-specific BS as necessary.
Any client company unfortunate enough to fall into this trap would basically be screwed for the duration of the contract.
As a systems admin, I don't want to fuss around with kernels, deciding between a distribution, and all that jazz
:) There was some guy who set up a RedHat web/db/mail/cvs server. He wasn't an uberguru, just a guy who knew what he was doing. That machine has been going and going for more than 3 years without being stopped, only on power failures. I had to replace it this summer because it's CPU fan stopped and the CPU just went bye-bye, and it was pretty old anyways.
:)) but that's not the point. The point is, once/month dist-upgrade and it's a runner for at least the next 3 years if the gods of hardware permit :)
Well, you must be some kind of a system admin. One thing certain: you'll never be root.
Thing is, what you say is only true for one type of admin: who raises a hand when asked who wants to do it. No history, no experience.
Ok, didn't want to do this, but I can't hold it
The new one is going on Debian/Woody of course
I would openly directly naturally and severly fight any argument war on all fronts of server capabilities against anyone who would replace it with any Windows server version.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I've only done cursory reading on migrating to Linux in the workplace. It seems though that most, if not all, of these studies assume a total, flip-the-switch conversion from Windows to Linux. What about a gradual (say over 5+ years) conversion?
I work for the main IT shop for a state (US) government, and every time I bring up OSS, I always get some version of "We have too many applciations custom written to go back and rewrite them." We are a Mainframe/Windows/Java shop, but no one advocates rewriting a Windows app to the Mainframe, or a Java app to Windows. What I want is a study that projects TCO of a Windows or hybrid shop bringing in Linux, and over time creating new applications and replacing old ones with Linux. In effect, a gradual phase out of the Windows technology. Anyone know of any unbiased reviews?
As a side question, what does Gartner and their ilk think of this topic? The PHBs don't want the opinions of the grunts and we don't have an R&D shop, so they follow whatever these consultants recommend.
I appreciate the fact that it's going to cost a company some money to switch from Windows to Linux, mainly to hire competent administrators (and if you're thinking of doing so, hiring competent administrators is an absolute must).
However, I also appreciate the fact that said company is never going to have to pay for a software and/or operating system upgrade ever again. This is called smart spending. You shell out money in the short term to save significant amounts of money in the long term.
Speaking from experience here, my company has switched every machine in our office to Linux, both servers and clients, and we've saved a bundle in the long run by doing so.
--It's Pimptastic!--
I can install it, set it up, run updates on it once in a while, run the baseline security analyzer on it, and forget about it. Give me a linux that does all this in an easy to use manner, and I'll switch.
You'll have to spend a bit more time doing the initial setup, but you'll more then regain that over the next few years.
I'd say it's well worth the investment, and you may want to consider it. Alternatively:
I'd like nothing better than to run a Unix variant, but until you bring me a monolithic distribution that just works
There are suppliers for exactly your market. SuSE, for example, is delivering ready-to-run enterprise servers, preinstalled and preconfigured. They'll even show up to complete the installation with your network settings and other requirements and give you a support contract.
The difference is that there are multiple vendors instead of just one. You will, oh horror, have to choose.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OK, are there any well-designed corporate applications for administrative assistants? What about apps for graphic designers working in print media?
I just got back from a client where I installed a server 4 years ago. A couple of apps were upgraded last year. The machine is a webapp server, file share (Macs) etc. and firewalled off behind a router. I haven't bothered much with security upgrades.
We just did an audit and as the hardware is getting on in age decided not to upgrade anything this year. The server is running Redhat 7.2 and a 2.2 kernel I believe.
Before that the server was a Windows NT box and I had to go and reboot it once every two weeks just to keep it from crashing. It couldn't serve files to Macs without crashing every two days.
The new server will run Fedora Core and upgrade itself with yum - NOW GET THIS which looks after dependencies all by its self!!! So maybe you could go off and do your job? At least be sufficiently documented on what a modern Linux distro can and can't do.
realkiwi
Look at what he says.
"# Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about Linux."
So everyone and their dog "thinks" they know Windows well enough to run a windows server... Except that it all the security issues that seem to be caused by poorly administrated Windows boxs seems to say otherwise. Linux experts are pretty rare.
"# All 14 companies said it was difficult finding qualified Linux personnel in the marketplace to support their Linux projects. When they did find third-party help, they had less leverage negotiating hourly rates than with Windows"
So if you know Linux you are more in demand than if you know Windows, and you will make more money doing it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
..for one upgrade (or change to keep it neutral) going from all MS to all Linux is probably pretty spendy. After that though,when you will want to continue upgrading, I would imagine it drops in price significantly, then stays cheaper forever. See, Balmer wants to keep business locked into that short sightedness, because at least he understands long term view, but he doesn't want other companies to honestly think that way, when it comes to what he has to sell. It is in his best intertest to be disingenuous on the topic. As in, do what I say, not what I do.
American business (I am generalizing now of course, but I think it is more accurate than not) seems to take short historical future progression extrapolations, this is called the "this quarter mentality". I think it would be more prudent to look at ten, twenty years or more in the future as well as just next year or next quarter.
CEOs that are only in it for a few years and want to cash out with as much as possible (seems like most of them doesn't it?) do more harm than good to corporations, and we can see that happening in the news all the time. And in order to get there, they do things that look fantastically good for the shareholders in the short term, so they get a free ride on their decisions, then when a WHOOPS happens, a lot of monday morning quarterbacking and lawsuits happen, and Joe CEO is long gone to Aruba with his golden parachute bundle..
And the weird thing is, you can see it happen over and over again, yet it continues, it's like the shareholding public refuses to learn any constructive lessons from the past.
see also: shafting your potential customer base by overly outsourcing still useful jobs, then wondering why your sales keep falling. One company doing that, eh, the domestic economy can handle it, almost all of them doing it, well, check out the business news lately to see what happens. Now creating additional jobs overseas is not harmful, but shifting the same job is if you want to maintain your domestic level of employment and the cash that is in the middle class pool, which by far is the most important one in most economies.
How lucky are you!
I could never forget about a windows install, neither run upgrades that easly.
Rethinking email
I don't see why any user would need to be a memeber of more than 16 groups, or why nested groups would be such a great thing, but it would be nice to have ext2 and ext3 support multiple groupsper file without having to find and apply a patch. Then again, I doubt I'd ever use it more than once or twice, and the existing unix file permissions scheme has lasted for so long because it works.
Other than that if the post you're replying to can't come up with any security problems greater than a proven file permission system that's easy to understand and use, then where's the problem?
Yes, you're a moron. TCO means "total cost of ownership". In the "total cost of ownership" of any kind of server, $142 is infitesimally small compared to training and setup costs. No offense, but you can't even troll very well. You sound like some kid looking at a '69 Mustang for his first car, saying "$5,000 is cheaper than a new Honda Civic", all the while, compeltely ignoring the fact that maintenance, gas, lost time with breakdowns, and insurance is going to make that '69 Mustang a hell of a lot more expensive than a Civic.
I don't respond to AC's.
time to explain this one again.
If you have a can of Coke and I take it, you no longer have a can of Coke. This is theft.
If you have a can of Coke and I use my beverage-copying machine to make a copy, we now each have a can of Coke. This is not theft.
The very fact that Ballmer wants to take on Linux gives people the impression that Linux is a worthy opponent.
It's the same with with US presidential debates, where the incumbent usually tries to negotiate his or her way out of as many debates as possible. Why? Because the mere fact that a challenger shares a stage with a sitting president tends to help the challenger.
The lesson those of us who use Linux in our daily work, and who see the value in things like open source and open standards, is just to hang loose.
Ballmer is offering free publicity.
---- Richard L. Goerwitz III
As a systems admin, you don't have to fuss around with kernels, you can also decide on one distribution if you want. Most distros are freely available on the net for download, so a discount isn't even needed. You can install it, set it up. run updates on it once in a while. Baseline security analyzer? Give me a break. Run a port scanner like nmap on the machine and run 'ps aux' to get a complete list of processes. Keep track of these and most security problems should be avoidable. Fedora does this, Red Hat does this, SuSE does this, the latest Ubuntu does this. You can use yum or apt, how much time does it take anyway? Dependencies are also handled by yum and apt, so no problems there. All these work.
Here's my question... if you're a systems administrator that believes that Windows 2003 is so easy to use, and takes little time, then why not use that extra time to learn the other side of things? You might actually like it if you read enough. Imagine the advantages of having both Windows and Linux on your resume. Or are Windows problems a little too much that you don't have time to learn? Imagine how much money your boss could save if you spent that extra time learning. Then he could get you to download Linux distros, and use those, without having to pay for additional licenses. Imagine the possibilities of opening your mind to new knowledge.
As a systems administrator and business owner, all I can say to you is... sheesh.
I didn't read all of the other replies but your problem is due to one of the recent Windows Updates. If you check the Internet Storm Center's diary entries there is a reference to specifically what you are talking about. Microsoft's UNIX Services were broken by a recent Windows Update...
Thing is the UK government have already identified that the upgrade cycle for hardware and software with Linux is less frequent at 6-8 years compared with 3-4 with Windows.
Soon when environment laws are toughened further (in the EU they're becoming so) it will cost a lot of money to dispose of computer hardware and so the TCO of Windows will have to include the cost of hardware upgrades and disposal of old hardware.
If you're doing this twice as often as Linux then you're paying twice as much simply based on the hardware, never mind the upgrade process (installation of new hardware and software) and training (due to software interface changes).
All this and I've not even mentioned licenses.
I am wondering about the obession that Microsoft has with Linux. I mean; COME ON; a free OS developed by mostly volunteers! How can that possibly be competition for the largest software company on the planet!
As one of the FOSS "minions", I am certainly interested in Microsoft - simply to ensure future interoperability. I want to ensure that future Windows will talk to my Apache Web Server, Email services, &etc.
I want to ensure that when someone brings a wireless laptop to my house, she can avail herself of the Internet, and local services.
But WTF does Microsoft care? Is the MS product so weak that FOSS actually hurts them? Then get 5 or 10 thousand developers working on the problem! And give us something better.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Microsoft posted hotfix that appears to be similar to what you are experiencing...
Microsoft always lies about Linux because its the only way they can justify their bloated product and expensive business model to those with no technical savvy (i.e. the decision-makers). We all know that already. Is more of the same even newsworthy?
The only reason Microsoft are still in business is because most companies generally put narrow-minded bean-counters in charge of corporate purchasing. Those people are so technically challenged and brainwashed by Microsoft's culture that they don't even care that better alternatives exist.
'k I work at a Uni too, but we get free 2003 server packs. Guess what? We only use them for a Windows Domain Controller. all our databases, webservers, file servers, backups, etc. are all Linux.
/. and spending my time learning new stuff.
We use Debian where possible, but, for hardware issues, we've had to use RedHat on three boxen. Never had a dependency issue. Never.
The 2003 Server runs faily well - still requires reboot on a lot of updates - but the Linux systems are almost never rebooted (6-month avg. uptime).
With recent virius attacks and service packs, the guy in my office whose only job is to admin the windows server and the workstations has had his hands full. I've been kicking back reading
Oh, and I didn't know Linux when I first set up this lab a few years back. So, my advice: Spend the hour it'll take to learn enough about Linux, set up Debian stable, crontab apt-get, and spend your time learning new stuff.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
So, the question is: why should anybody give Microsoft many hours of free consulting just so that Microsoft can turn around and use that to further monopolize the market? Why should anybody donate time and effort to Microsoft just to have the company turn around and charge them for everybody's voluntary contributions to their software?
Microsoft's dirty little secret is that most of the value of their software isn't created by them, it's created by their customers. They are just capturing that value and making a bundle on it. And they are charging their customers for the same effort over and over again, just because they can.
Even if Linux were no better than Windows, with Linux, people can be sure that they are not getting charged for their own and other people's free contributions to the effort.
I can see it now:
An executive sitting in a board room. With a goatee. "I like the lower TCO I get with Windows."
He sips his cappucino (or whatever drink is trendy in two years.) We get a different angle on him.
"I just feel safer knowing that SCO isn't going to sue me."
The camera angle changes again. "My name is Ben Dover... and I'm a CEO."
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
Rich is nice, but the part I'm really looking forward to in not being held accountable for my fuck-ups!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Ballmer says Linux is not viable. The UK government says it is. I have no idea who out of the two I trust least... :(
"All of the major Linux vendors and distributors (including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell [SUSE and Ximian] and Red Hat) have begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification."
...more expensive (5% to 20%) than...
...took 5% to 25% longer...
...three to four times more expensive...
So Microsoft provides these extras for free?
I've read the warranty from Microsoft's products. They don't warrant shit. Nor do I expect to see a pro bono Microsoft lawyer pop out of thin air if someone makes a copyright claim regarding their products.
And customer support?
Give me a break.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release.
You could have fooled our IT department. Because of the shifting sands beneath the code in various Microsoft Office versions, we (a national laboratory) have had to recode all of our Word macros and all of our Access apps everytime there is a "new" release of Office.
And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
Not because of superior technology, but because of integration hooks and low-ball initial pricing. When you swallow the Microsoft hook, you take the line and sinker with it. Regurgitating all of that 'infrastructure' will inevitably take more money to change. That would be true shifting from a pure *NIX environment to a Windows-centric environment.
Shifting from specifics to global ranges indicates they have no idea what the cost structures are. They are cherry picking their report figures and glossing over their own problems.
Hardly surprising for a marketing letter.
But keep in mind everyone: Windows is Free!.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
... shovel!
- Kevin
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
Hey .. stop stealing my story!! heh..
.. Installed June 2001.. Serves up ftp, mail, web, mac & pc files, NAT, DHCPd, databases and who knows what else.. Whats interesting is out of the huge array of Macs (G3, G4, G5, XServe) and PCs (Win98, 2k, XP) at that business, the lowly Red Hat box on 5 year old hardware is the most reliable system there.
.. one of these days .. I have since moved to FreeBSD for all of my other servers, but this system just works and it would be such a shame to upgrade it just for the sake of upgrading.. heh.
I have a Red Hat box running Linux 2.2.19
Its getting upgraded here
The memo might be a great PR move. But memos like this from the upper brass hurt morale in a company. When you have a letter from anyone in a top position that is so far out of whack with reality and does not seem to be taking comptetiton seriously, it makes you wonder if the executives know what they are doing at all.
So by publishing something like this he is doing Microsoft no favors in the long run.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A was going to sell B a can of Coke to B. Instead, B illicitly copies A's can. Now A can't sell it to B. B has stolen revenue from A. As what was stolen from A was precisely the value of the can, and by analogy with the conventional use of the word 'steal', we conveniently describe this by saying that B stole the can.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Most Chinese neither steal or get Windows for free, they buy it from pirates.
There are many disadvantages to pirated software. Pirated copies of Windows usually have troubles using Windows Update and pirated software always comes without any sort of support. That is a downside to the Chinese customers who buys pirated software.
For organizations of some size, pirated software has many limits. First off, they may be so large that it is worth suing them. Secondly, they need support and stability something hard to achieve with pirated software.
Free software doesn't have these issues. Chinese business and goverment institutions are better off using free software. If the largest institutions adopt free software expect many to follow.
Evolution is just a scientific theory. Creationism is not.
In other words every time you click on their ad you effect a Microsoft donation to Slashdot!
Now where is that ad....
Spoken like a man who has never used linux.
"don't want to fuss around with kernels, deciding between a distribution, and all that jazz. "
Futzing with kernels? Who does that anymore? How many times do you decide between distributions? I'll give you a hint, once.
"Sure, I could use apt and the others, but it just takes too much time, and you have to worry about various dependencies and what not."
Who the hell modded you up after saying something this collosally ignorant. Apt takes too much time? You have to worry about dependencies with apt? What the fuck? The parent does not know what they are talking about or is lying mod them down people.
"I'd like nothing better than to run a Unix variant, but until you bring me a monolithic distribution that just works,"
What you mean like debian or suse or something?
"I'll have to stay Microsoft for now."
Yes you do that. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
evil is as evil does
While [the open source development process] has some validity, it is not necessarily the best way to develop secure software. We believe in the effectiveness of a structured software engineering process that includes a deep focus on quality, technology advances, and vigorous testing to make software more secure.
But not for the last twenty one years, apparently:
About three years ago, we made software security a top priority,..
So they think that the open source approach to development has some validity, but that their approach - THAT THEY ADMIT THEY HAVEN'T BEEN USING FOR 20+ YEARS - is better.
Hmmmm....
They found that Microsoft addressed all of the 128 publicly disclosed security flaws in Windows over the 12-month period studied, and that its security updates predated major outbreaks by an average of 305 days.
There are only 360 days in the study period. That means their average is nearly the timeframe covered by the study.
I get suspicious when I see this kind of conclusion. Have they only been in business a year?
After careful analysis, farmaCity concluded that Windows would reduce network administration by 30 percent compared with Linux, and would also simplify identity and desktop management..
And this is proof of security... how?
What was the analytical methodology? Why is network administration such a large burden? I don't even see the update activities on my Linux machine, but I have been warned by our IT group not to deploy XP SP2 due to breakage problems.
Hmmmm....
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
The "indemnification" point is serious FUD based on way overblown fears of end user patent liability.
In fact, the most likely "patent" scenario is the one we have today: i.e., patent "hold-ups" in which 2-bit "inventors" demand "royalties" from software users, based on patents they probably never should never have been granted. These patent owners want to bleed a lot of companies for relatively small bucks each. They do not in fact want to actually shut anyone down; they just want to collect a small "tax" from a big population. These are nuisances to big companies (the usual targets of such claims), and certainly potential expense items, but NOT the sort of thing that should make a strategic difference in one's technology direction.
All that being said, offering uncapped indemnification to customers against potential software patent claims is a valid selling point. Of course, Microsoft software is no less vulnerable to these claims than anyone else's, and the email was a little unclear whether the "uncapped" amount was for the costs of legal defense (attorneys' fees) or that plus the actual liability to the patent owner.
Microsoft's offer of indemnification is credible if for no other reason than Microsoft's huge financial liquidity. In the open source world, there are also a few companies, such as IBM, that have good financial credit and can credibly make a comparable offer. But there are quite a few providers who are not in a position to do this.
Perhaps the answer for the others would be to offer reasonably priced group insurance from a financially sound insurer . . . IF the market considers that a response like that is even necessary.
Ballmer's missive landed in my mailbox last night (somehow it escaped my spam filter), and I wrote this response. I know no one there will read it, but it was still fun to write.
Being a former technical software salesman myself, I've experienced and used the TCO defense as the last resort before I lost a sale. That is what Ballmer is doing here. Features and benefits aren't enough to sway the buyer into purchasing Microsoft software, so you have to resort to a different value proposition.
Features and benefits are valued more than anything else by the customer. It is the reason to even consider a purchase. This being the issue, it simply means that Ballmer realized that Linux has better and more value to the customer than Microsoft Winblows. Hence, the last justification is the TCO stand. And like political races, truth is meaningless, it's only what the voter will believe.
Analogy mode on:
If you need to move a refrigerator, then you need a good size pickup truck. A used car salesman will try to sell you a hatchback Honda and give you advice on how to turn the 'frig on it's side and shove it into the hatchback. The Honda may get great mileage and be cheaper, but it doesn't do the job. What good is it?
Analogy mode off:
In this case the TCO figures are an out and out lie.
The "independent" sources of TCO and general IT practices analysis live by the motto: "Never piss off the 800lb gorilla in your house" (Microsoft).
Linux and all Open Source groups have no fear of the 800lb gorilla.
The Yankee Group report claimed that some interviewees reported that "a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive" than the usual Windows upgrade. Well, duh!
Maria Winslow rocks!
Any analyst who can get away with using the phrase "Well, duh!" in a position paper is a geek goddess.
Yes, I did say 'geek goddess' and not 'greek goddess'.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
<rant>
I'm sorry, but comments like these only make you appear incredibly ignorant; when did you use Linux last? In 1994?
Linux Myth #1: Kernels must always, ALWAYS be compiled by hand. It is utterly impossible for distributions to provide a packaged kernel.
Linux Reality #1: Welcome to the world of package management! With just every distribution, kernel upgrades are trivial, and are identical to upgrading every other piece of software on your computer.
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgradeWhat's that? New kernel installed? Gee, that sure was tough!
Linux Myth #2: Distributions are confusing, and the process of selecting which one to use is a time-consuming process. Once you've selected one, you must review the decision over and over.
Linux Reality #2: Distributions are largely the same, and the selection of them pretty much boils down to personal preference. Some distributions provide benefits that some others don't, but the difference in most cases is marginal, and not worth hours of deliberation.
In any case, if that is too much work for you, here's a handy list:
Red Hat Enterprise Got lots of cash? Need a hefty support contract for mission-critical servers? Right now, this is pretty much the only game in town. Debian Linux Don't need a support contract (or can't afford one) but still need enterprise-level stability and the best package management available for Linux? Debian is for you! Fedora Core Need something solid and well-supported, but don't care about extreme uptimes? Looking for the absolute latest versions of several server applications? This is the distro of choice.Of course, there are other distributions you can use that I haven't mentioned, but it's all about choice. Like I said before, the difference between distributions is relatively small and widely overblown.
Give me a linux that does all this in an easy to use manner, and I'll switch.
Linux Myth #3: People would use it, if only it weren't so damn tough.
Linux Reality #3: People don't use it because they are comfortable with their misconceptions, and have few current motivations to reconsider them. If you were serious about the above statement, you already would have switched. Linux is not difficult; it is your being wedged in the Windows paradigm that has you stuck there. The same is true in reverse; it's just as difficult for a Linux administrator with zero Windows experience to migrate over to Windows.
You don't have to compile kernels. Hell, with packaging, you don't even have to compile any software whatsoever. Upgrades are simple. When shit does hit the fan, you have plenty more options available to you to discover the source of the problem. Many distributions' installation processes are almost entirely automated, requiring the user to make less than 5 choices the entire process.
Is Linux perfect? Of course not. Is it better than Windows? It really depends on the situation: the intended use, the overall cost, and the skill of the administrator. But using age-old excuses like "compiling kernels is hard" and "there are too many distributions" to justify you staying put with Windows is either a cop out or simply being severely uninformed. And even if it wasn't, a good system administrator should be exploring new territory, and trying things that open up possibilities even if they are difficult at first.
</rant>
No comment.
MS could declare that the sky is blue or 1+1=2 and Slashdot will spend the rest of the week with pendantic arguments and nitpicks proving the sky is blue or 1+1=2 only with Linux.
/. is unquestionable, the obsession angle is poorly argued.
While the level of Linux support on
If anyone is obsessed, it is Microsoft. Here's why:
1) Balmer spent the better part of a few productive days drafting his letter, then redrafting it, getting reviews and comments, revising it and having his secretary reformat it, before having their web staff put together the executive letter for the website. What do you think that effort cost Microsoft for those days of work?
2) In that same timeframe, Linus wrote, received, reviewed, and recompiled code for the next kernel version.
Who is more obsessed again?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Don't read what Ballmer wrote since (IMHO) the focus is NOT on lower TCO...instead read in to what Ballmer meant. This is a public salvo thrown out that clearly signals their intention: they're coming after Linux and open source hard.
Read in to what Ballmer meant when he said, "Given the growing concern among customers about intellectual property indemnification, what's the best way to minimize risk?" Read this and then think about it.
Mod the parent up. Where are mod points when you need them? You need to add that to LinuxQuestions.org in the FAQ section.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
This sounds like "640 KB is more than enough". Actually, I often have problems in setting up security domains for projects at the university. Imagine a CVS project where you must use the campus wide file system to set up a reposotory and where you wish to give read/write access to different users in different sub projects. The Linux native access control mechanisms are not flexible enough.
One way to look at such problems is that the reason that something is good enough, is because users don't know better. Like my grandfather who could not understand the use of planes.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
So basically you're lazy and incompetant, unwilling to investigate solutions and make a decision.
I can download Fedora Core for free. Or Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, ... the list goes on.
Oh, but wait, you can't make a decision.
More laziness and incompetance. You don't pay attention to advisories? Make sure your setup is tuned for your installation?
So you just want a system that lets you be a lazy, incompetant administrator, because you don't want to have to do anything other than click a button now and again?
Linux actually is easy to administer. A bit of setup and one or two people can maintain a thousand or more Linux boxes. Without that much headache. Sure, they'll have to know Linux, how to use the tools, and maybe even be good. But paying 2 people $80k a year is cheaper than paying 20 people $30k a year.
Ignorance. Anyone who is familiar with these tools knows that dependency maintenance is part of what they do.
Please do. We don't need lazy, incompetant idiots running our critical boxes.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I can't believe how businesses have been hoodwinked into believing that "TOTAL Cost" has a horizon of 1-3 years (whatever the frequency of windows updates is these days). If they intend to be around for decades more, than they should have some vision of those decades to come. Of course switching is expensive! But upgrades to Windows are generally more expensive than upgrades to even commercially-supported versions of Linux.
This gap could potentially change if MS suddenly moved to a subscription model--presumably they'd see that by keeping subscription costs low "enough" people would stay locked in. But it is also easier to justify the insignificant monthly or anual costs of a subscription than large expenditutres every few years for upgrades.
The Community needs a study of annually amortized UPGRADE costs for different platforms. Then businesses could make a more informed decision--Is the switch worth it if it pays for itself in 3 years?
There are plenty of distros in linux that deal with dependencies for you. IMHO, Mandrake's 'urpmi' and Gentoo's 'emerge' do a good job of searching for, downloading, and installing package dependencies for you. I can run 'urpmi.update -ac;urpmi --update --auto-select' on Mandrake or 'emerge -uD world' on Gentoo to get the latest fixes. One difference with Gentoo though, is it actually updates the entire system to the latest stable version, not just the latest patches for the current version.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
But A still has his asset, his can of Coke. So his net loss is zero.
-Tez
Haskell, the static-typed, lazy, polymorphic, programming language.
here
If I remember right, it literally means "cut one's abdomen"
hara->abdomen
kiri->some form of the verb kiru, to cut
->seppuku
->harakiri
I wonder why they are reverse, and why seppuku is "preferrable".
errera hunamum ets
First you ignore them,
Then you laught at them,
Then you fight them,
Then they win.
I wonder if this works backwards. It sure seems like it does: I've gone all the way from the last stage back to the first stage over the last 5 years.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
No, because if such a thing as a can copier existed A could sell copies of the can. A will have incurred an opportunity cost becaue he could have sold the can to B and kept it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Well yeah. Illicitly copying the Coke can deprives A of the revenue from one payment but actually taking the can away from A deprives A of an entire revenue stream. Taking stuff away from people is even worse than mere stealing.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I'm sorry, but nothing I've ever seen on Netcraft or anywhere supports your statement, in fact it directly contradicts it.
And, I would like an example of "integrate better with their internal MS databases and webservers"
Do you actually use any M$ based/proprietary connections/communications/protocols over the open Internet? Are you high? I'm sure *some* idiot companies are doing netbios rpc to *some* idiot web hoster, or MSSQL over the Internet, I mean I guess you're actually right, becuase all those Code Red/Nimda attacks that I get in my logs have to be coming from somewhere...
I apologize, you could be right... which would be scary to me if it meant anything more than a slightly annoying increase in traffic..
emerge codegreen...
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
And getting access through your IIS server to the CLI hasn't ever been very hard for them..
At least that's what I hear.. since I wouldn't know so don't ask, no I did NOT format your hard drive.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
Look at all the bad press coming about GeorgeWBush.com.
The supposed reason for them blocking their site? Hacking attempts that they could not deal with.
A few weeks ago, someone on slashdot ran Nessus on Kerry's and Bush's websites. The summary: Bush's website uses Microsoft IIS and had 44 unpatched vulnerabilities. Kerry's used Apache and had 2 vulnerabilities.
Do you think that the TCO for Bush's website is lower, figuring in all the bad press? I don't think so.
Given the monkey boy video, I think that Balmer is certainly an "Excitable Boy". And the grandparent is right, Warren Zevon, you are missed.
Will this not make M$ look weaker in the eyes of it's customers? This (IMHO) was a very transparent marketing (panic attack) attempt?
No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue.
From the first paragraph:
Gee, I know whenever I need to make a major business decision, the first person I go to is someone who is trying to sell me something. Why bother consulting someone who has not already made up their mind?
Either Ballmer is lying, or they've had thousands of meetings with idiots.
I can tell you that their systems are crap..they're still using dumb terminal style programs and old clunky DOS style interfaces for everything..
Those who can, do. Those who can't, go into business for themselves.
Honestly, if you're pro-Windows in any way shape or form, YOU CAN HAVE IT. Application and storage servers -- I would never host on a Windows box. Not because I'm anti-Microsoft, just because I know how Linux works for my company. The adjectives to describe Linux's role for us are: fast, reliable, secure, inexpensive.
So, blast through all of your metrics and case studies, and even tell me that I don't measure my costs properly.. but my company has been in the black since its inception, and I have to give a lot of credit to my backend boxes, which, from day one, have always been running Linux.
"Sure, they'll have to know Linux, how to use the tools, and maybe even be good."
If you replace Linux with MS Windows in that statement, it is almost as true. MS Windows is not actually easier to administer *well*. It's roughly the same difficulty as Linux (easier with some tasks; harder with others). The biggest difference is that it is much easier to administer MS Windows *badly* but well enough that things work. With Linux, one has a much better chance of finding a good admin, because the bad admins are more obvious.
I don't know what hari-kari is, probably you mean seppuku or hara kiri.
Sumimasen.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Anybody ever notice that Balmer and Cheney look a lot alike... A whole lotta fear mongering going on between the two. http://www.ctam.com/conferences/summit/2003/images /photo-balmer.jpg
http://www.greatdreams.com/political/dick-cheney-2 002.jpg
Heh... that's funny... moderated down for "troll" posting, yet all I'm pointing out is that nearly every post in this thread is spreading anti-Microsoft FUD in response to anti-Linux FUD, and as such is dragging the debate down to their level.
Not that I'm surprised at all, but I guess y'all just can't take criticism.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I was supprised to find that it wasn't spoofed. (headers, ip address, etc.)
And then maddend by that fact that I've been spammed yet again, but this time by M$.
How many of you got BallmerGram'd
Where is the opt-out?
By not using a hackish distribution.
in a world where things can be (almost) freely copied, you're saying even though EVERYONE and ANYONE could make a free copy of a can of coca-cola, that no, we must all use A's very limited supply and pay money for it? People should starve to death rather than making free copies of food?
This is an analogy. Nobody is starving because they can't afford to buy the latest Britney Spears album.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Please mod parent up.
GIDs are stored in a list of 32-gid blocks, with an upper limit of 64k (posted recently on the Linux Kernel list).
See also, include/linux/sched.h, specifically the task_struct and group_info structs. (at least with 2.6.9)
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Here's Ballmer, a billionaire who runs the largest software company in the world. They're sitting on billions in cash and can do pretty much anything they want with it.
However, I'm just another geek who uses linux, partly just to dick around and fiddle with it. I'm always trying to make my desktop nicer looking and more usable. And here is Ballmer, scared shitless of people like us. He knows that some day when we're out of college, we'll have knowledge and drive to set up Linux in corporate situations where it could become a lucrative job and take money and control out of their hands.
I love it.
From the article:
- Preparation and planning activities took 5% to 25% longer for Linux than Windows.
- Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about Linux.
- All 14 companies said it was difficult finding qualified Linux personnel in the marketplace to support their Linux projects. When they did find third-party help, they had less leverage negotiating hourly rates than with Windows consulting resources.
Revised version with comments:
- Linux administrators take longer than Windows administrators to plan their infrastructure.
This is bad? Linux administrators have more choices, so they think more about what they are doing. Windows administrators know that anything wrong can be blamed on MS's software.
- Retraining Windows admins on Linux is expensive.
Windows admins are trained how to reboot. Their prior skill is useless in the new environment
- Linux admins are expensive and difficult to find.
Good news for the many unemployed Slashdotters. Very large companies are looking for you, and think you are worth much money. The bad news is they have never heard of Slashdot. Should Slashdot start a job listing or resume website to help these clueless big companies?
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Just once, I'd like to see one of these "uncommissioned" TCO reports separate OS users into software producers and software consumers. If you produce software you have a vested interest in sticking with MS - they change their OS every few years and that means their customers, and yours, will be back again and again. Let's face it, software is not a consumable - it doesn't wear out or get used up. There has to be something other than new faces driving sales or you're dead as a producer.
Software consumers don't like to keep buying new versions of software, and if they're home users they don't necessarily care about MS support, or lack thereof, for an obsolete OS. They're going to keep playing those games on Windows 98 as long as they work. Commercial users pretty much need to use supported software - if they can't go to someone when they have a problem it's useless to them. That's the primary allure of MS over open software. Though with Big Blue and others getting into the service end of open software there is a whole lot less reason for saying open software is not supported, particularly if you've got a service contract with a large outfit.
My company writes a lot of custom software for internal use, only. Expensive software. We need a supported OS. A lot of stuff we have that worked in NT doesn't work in XP, so it's been a major headache making the switch (we're still not half way there). As one of the better MS customers we are actually one of the reasons MS provided support for NT long after it was supposed to expire.
I don't know when the guys running this outfit are going to see, if they ever do, that sticking with MS means we are going to have to go through this over and over and over again. That's because every MS OS is obsolete and without MS support, right out of the box. It just hasn't happened for the newer ones, yet. That's something that's not given a lot of weight in these TCO analyses, and nobody tells you up front.
If you're measuring "Cost" in seconds you've got to invest, and "Ownership" stands for gaining remote control of the given OS.
Agreed, since Ballmer's perfectly right with that.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
But I'm curious how Linux distro's compete with Active Directory and the slew of enterprise configuration utilities available on Windows 2003 Server?
I'm a full time Linux user, but as a workstation doesn't require these types of tools I've never actually come across them before.
To be honest, in my Windows server classes I've been pretty impressed with some of their enterprise solutions. Considering, for the forseeable future, we'll be developing networking around mainly Windows clients whats Linux got to compete or outdo Windows on the controller end?
I'd guess Suse is going to have the best chance, if Novell really tosses everything they had going in Netware into making Suse Enterprise a competative product. I'd be curious to hear what Linux admins are doing in the real world.
Does Linux have a serious enterprise grade alternative?
Quack, quack.
But as the Yankee Group commented in an independent, non-sponsored global study of 1,000 IT administrators and executives, Linux, UNIX and Windows TCO Comparison, things aren't always as they seem: "All of the major Linux vendors and distributors (including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell [SUSE and Ximian] and Red Hat) have begun charging hefty premiums for must-have items such as technical service and support, product warranties and licensing indemnification."
Obviously they are talking about SCO's false claims there. Fucking opportunistic bastards! Regardless of whether or not the conspiracy theory is true, that MS prompted SCO's frivolous lawsuit to discredit Linux, the fact of the matter is that they are trying to make use of it in their PR. Whether it was planned from the start or not, either way that is now part of their strategy now, the deceptive bastards.
Call this a troll if you will, but I don't apologise for being honest.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Or maybe that's not what he said.
Yankee's study concluded that, in large enterprises, a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux would be three to four times more expensive - and take three times as long to deploy - as an upgrade from one version of Windows to a newer release. And nine out of 10 enterprise customers said that such a change wouldn't provide any tangible business gains.
Punctuation exists for a reason. It's clear from the *actual* text that he's referring to "a significant Linux deployment or total switch from Windows to Linux" when he says "such a change".
Twisting his words is one thing. Changing what he says completely is another.
But then upgrading to the latest Unix servers would probably yield a 75% reduction in servers.
You know what they say. There are lies, damn lies and then Microsoft marketing.
*Picking self off floor after rolling around laughing* Thanks, man, I needed that.
But seriously, it is amazing how few companies actually understand the value of being perceived as honest.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Bush is to Microsoft :)
... :)
as...
well, I can't in good conscience say "Kerry is too Linux..."
Oh wait, this will work...
Bush is to Microsoft
as
Kerry is to Sun
and
Nader is to Linux.
Everyone knows that Nader would be good for the country but not enough people are willing to really switch over.
Times are a changin but slowly. The sad thing is that Nader has looked PRETTY haggard the past couple years... He is still feisty as ever, just looking much older of late.
~G
PS. Oh this is GREAT
AND
Chenny is to SCO!
LOL! Well, it cracked me up anyway.
If Linux costs more, that means it has singificantly more margin than Windows, which is an important appeal to anyone the term "sales," "marketing," "distributor" or "dealer" applies...
Keep up the good work Balmer-- such notes make it much easier for those who make a living off Linux distribution... I see $$$$$....
That's obvious by the state of M$ code... they tried to find cheaper PR solutions to their problems. They didn't see the issue as burning.
You can bet your bottom dollar that they do now... don't dismiss the point because you might find it "uncool". If you're unsure, find a M$ developer, and ask them specifically what they have changed to make their products more secure...
Some recent changes that I've heard about are:
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Cookie, the reason 95% of computers run windows is because billy bathgates is a gangster.
Ballmer - And as Yankee Group noted in its Linux, UNIX and Windows TCO Comparison study, "Linux-specific worms and viruses are every bit as pernicious as their UNIX and Windows counterparts - and in many cases they are much more stealthy."
Spin, Spin, Spin! Just more proof that you can take anything out of context... or just outright lie.
Almost all of the annoying spyware/adware software out there will only infect a Microsoft platform. You've immediately just reduced your maintenance headaches in typical organizations by over 50%.
Let's look at some information actually based on analysis of CERT data...
Windows v Linux security: the real factsp ort_windows_vs_linux/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/security/security_re
If you prefer, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/22/security_r eport_windows_vs_linux.pdf
- Have you ever noticed that the more you learn about technology, the more stupid you sound trying to explain it?
Where are mod points when you need them?
Sadly, I have them all. Life's a bitch, eh?
No comment.
I did mention that being able to assign multiple groups to files could be nice, but nesting groups isn't really a solution. it's a quick and dirty hack which would end up hiding what groups really have access to the file. Yes you could expand the nested group to see which groups it contains, but with the current method (or the multiple groups per file method) you can quickly see who has what access with an ls -l.
In any case, I keep trying to find a time when even the ability to assign multiple groups to a file would be needed. If the admin sets up sane groups to begin with, then there shouldn't really be that much need for multiple groups per file. As to it being a maintenance nightmare, I have to ask: "how so?" creating a group is a simple task, adding a user to the group is a simple task, adding several users to the group based on their curren group membership wouldn't be that hard to do with a simple shell script. and it's pretty easy to find out what users are members of any given group. and if you have users ending up as members of more than 16 groups, then I would first check to see if you have a good reason to have that many groups and have users as members of that many groups.
I remember back around 1984, working for a company that made dedicated 'word processor' boxes. When the IBM PC came out, it was obvious to most of us that our whole industry was a dinosaur that was about to go extinct. But our marketing execs. kept insisting that we were fine, since '90% of the time, PC's are only used for word-processing, and we can give them better support'.
The Linux (originally Unix) virus comes as an email:
"This is a Linux virus. Please forward this email to 6 of your friends. Then delete all the files you care about."
I didn't use the term "stealing"; I simply pointed out where most of the value for that company comes from. There is nothing illegal in doing what they are doing, but that doesn't mean that it's fair to the customer either.
By analogy, most people probably pay too much for their cars, and car dealers make a bundle because of that. That doesn't mean that the car dealer is stealing, it means that the car buyer didn't do their homework. Once you realize how car dealerships and most software houses work, you can start making informed choices that save you money. Like, for example, using open source software.
Microsoft is doing nothing different than any other software developer.
Just like there are many car dealers that try to overcharge you, there are many software developers doing the same thing as Microsoft. But there are also some ways in which you can get your software that's more efficient:
Furthermore, keep the context of this discussion in mind: Microsoft is making grand statements about TCO, but they are sweeping the costs of their development model under the rug.
FreeBSD has a daily security checking script that runs via cron, so does NetBSD, I assume OpenBSD does too... So do most of the major Linux distros. Sure there are probably a few that don't, but thats why we have choices! I mean, come on, not being able to learn something new, and you work for an educational institution... pathetic....
Now wait a second. According to Bill Gates and Sun _hardware_ will be free. In fact, Johnathan Schwartz can even be quoted as saying "Bill Gates and I agree that within four to five years hardware will be free." *sigh*
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Ummmmm...
I think it's "Hara Kari"
Hari Kari sounds like the Cubs' WGN play by play guy.
3 steps to help ensure your PC is protected:
:-P )
1) Format you hard drive.
2) Install Linux.
3) I lied. There are only 2 steps.
(Sorry, I couldn't resist
See, the problem is that you are using their hired consultant's numbers. If I tell you that it will cost you a billion dollars and take you fifteen years to start using my compeditors product I would expect to keep you as a customer. ("Geez Bob, we will never dig ourselves out of that hole!") I would severly doubt that the cost is 3-4 times as expensive for openers. Even if you hire RedHat themselves to help in the conversion, I doubt it would be that much. Also - remember there is no such thing as a "product upgrade cycle for Windows" - you pay out on a regular basis or pay throught he nose for newer versions.
As for the thrre times as long to deploy stuff, every upgrade 3.1->9x->2000->xp has had a year+ learning curve for users/admins as well. Getting them to train in their spare time by running machines side by side, or setting them up for real training - I give it a year before they could start to roll out some services (DHCP, file server, Domain Control)confidently. There are even pop in distros that will do all this for you, clarkconnect comes to mind.
In short these are trash numbers, made to spread FUD and nothing more.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
OK, well fine. Ford stole market share from Christler and maybe Christler has no incentive to make cars without a government granted monopoly on their production and distribution. But really, does anyone truely think this is "stealing" in the true sense of the word. No it's bullshit morality, and nobody was violated even if Christler felt they were.
Basically, the Coke argument is the same thing. It suggests market share of information is a property right of the originator - when it isn't really a right at all. It is a form of controll.
This appears to be one of those questions that doesn't get answers. How about Linux based authentication schemes? If I have a FreeBSD/Mac OSX/BeOS/Win32/Linux workstation can I log into "the network" using a Linux server for authentication? Can a single authentication server work in tandem with secondary servers and can they be configured to replicate any users accounts/configuration I set up on the first one?
I hear a lot of blurbs about the exchange server and it seems like Linux has support for most (all?) of the important features, what distro take advantage of that? Do any include decent configuration tools?
I know Linux has made some big headway into corporate business and since I'm going to be trying to make a career out of this stuff any insight would really be appreciated.
Quack, quack.
I don't understand how you arrived at this position. Running a Windows machine is MUCH more of a pain in the butt than running a Linux (or *BSD) machine. With Windows, something is ALWAYS going wrong. Someone's trying to hack you, some schmuck browsed a porn site and loaded you up with viruses or spyware or worse, you patch and crash your machine, worms run throughout your LAN because some CS senior got "frisky" with one of the PCs in the lab...
With a Linux or *BSD machine, you have to work for a few days to set it up initially (securing the machine, configuring services and firewall, fetching the initial set of patches, etc) but then things calm down. Sure, you'll check for patches fairly regularly, and patch the machine when something comes up, and you'll maintain your users and watch your logs...
But on a Windows box you'll be doing all that AND sweating bullets, watching your workstation with a handful of prayer beads, praying your college's OWN STUDENTS don't make a horse's ass out of you.
What good is the ease of point and click when your computer blows up on a regular basis? And, Windows is a pain to back up and fix, besides. It's not like you can pop in a live CD and rebuild your system, because of the registry, and so forth.
At least with Linux, you can always pop in a Knoppix and take a look around, fixing as you go.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
heh, neither Britney nor the RIAA starves when kid rips her music: they still remain quite filthy rich anyway.
2 Years ago I was the kind of guy who pirated copies of Windows and thought that Linux was "too hard" or just "whoa."
/etc, where they are supposed to be, you don't have to screw around with dependecies, though you can control them, and did I mention that it's smoking fast?
The first distro that I tried was RedHat, which I have to admit I was excited to install, but back then I didn't have broadband - so there was very little I could do without an Internet connection. (WinModems - yuck!)
When I finally got broadband, I tried Fedora, and ran that for a while, but I wasn't getting all that far with it and I was so confused by the layout of the distribution, with configuration files all over the place, dependecies that seemed excessive; I felt like I was drowning in all the things I didn't know.
So I switched to Gentoo - I heard good things about it, I liked the idea of a source-code optimized distro. Sure, I guess getting it installed was kind of tough - I started from a stage1 and built everything. But all the conf files are in
First, I build a server, which I do hosting from, then I repeated the process with my primary desktop. Gentoo takes a long time to set up, but once it's up, it's up for good. I think my desktop has been up for 40 days continuously, no problems, no incidents, and did I mention I know a WHOLE LOT more about computers and linux now?
Running Linux versus Running Windows is like studying art with a famous artist versus scribbling with crayons. The best part is, that now I can imagine new things to do with my computer that just weren't possible before - like a web interface to my mp3 collection, building my own home media center, hosting 8 different websites off of my modest server, web design without constant FTP uploading, etc.
I noticed a few months back that the quote works just as well in reverse, when applied to Microsoft supporters. I remember the days anyone suggesting MS was the better choice was viciously attacked by "zealots".
/. after all). When you see an MS-friendly post, more often than not the result is condesending, or outright laughing at the poster. Linux supporters no longer have to be on the defensive.
Now it seems the zealots have for the most part disappeared, and cooler heads are prevailing (not too much though, this is
Last post!
An analysis of the numbers of the two latest versions shows quite clearly who wins:
& w= 0
Apache 2.0.52 Latest version
http://secunia.com/search/?search=Apache+2.0.52
3 vulnerabilities, 0 viruses.
Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS)
http://secunia.com/search/?search=IIS+6&w=0
30 vulnerabilites, 744 viruses.
No matter how the facts are carefully selected and edited, the more popular product has far less bugs. And IIS vulnerabilities are examples of why Windows is so unsecure as well. Many IIS vulnerabitlies are shared, for example:
Microsoft vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Outlook, Outlook Express and Internet Information Server (IIS) 2002-11-20
http://secunia.com/advisories/7567/
And this is a highly critical advisory as well. Because of Microsoft integration of applications with the fundamentals of Windows, the operating system can be easily compromised by a vulnerabilitiy in any microsoft application.
If your bodd owns 2000 shares of Micosoft then if is unprofitable for your boss not to toss 3 million. But fpr your company is a different story.
I know of an actual case of 4 years uptime in continious service for a Linux Red Hat 6.2 server running DNS, Squid and and another app. Once per week a cron job cycled squid for a minor memory leak.
It lost it's 4 year mark as the building power. Booted like a charm afterwards.
Most management didn't know it existed because it didn't cause problems like so many Windows systems. In fact this is where a properly setup Linux system really scores on Microsoft OSes. And never really factored into TCO.
Until management wakes up and stops listening to the market bu#$%(it so often payed for by the people with billions - we are stuck wuth patch, pray and tons of maintenence on a '60s message passing kernel with inadaquate memory bounds checking and so many holes it couldn't leave port if it were a ship.
Or like a real good recent humor, "unstable like Charles Manson".
The number one reason Microsoft doesn't release source? There are so many as of yet undiscovered holes it makes the universe look small.
cron-apt
then every now and again log in and run apt-get -y dselect-upgrade.
Chances are you'll have all the packages thanks to cron apt, your packages will be up to date and it's just a case of applying them
Getting NVIDIA drivers to work can be a pain in the ass. It took a long time and lots of tweaks in my XFree86.conf file to get tv-out working on my laptop. In windows, it just worked.
However, this is a problem with NVIDIA. It's is also because of NVIDIA that the drivers work so well in windows. The difference in operating systems isn't the issue here. It's the hardware developers who must take credit and complaint when it doesn't work.
Microsoft syndrome is just a peak of iceberg. For remote observer, economic propaganda steadily replacing real technology is a good recipe to long term disaster. See historic example of the former Soviet Union. Will corporate America be the next empire decayed from within?
There you are, staring at me again.
That's funny, I've used the Windows "enterprise solutions" and haven't been the slighest bit impressed. Just for starters, Active Directory is probably the biggest dog I've ever seen.
Absolutely everything. First off, I must mention Samba, only because I'll be flamed if I don't.
More than that, just about everything high-end Windows has, the ideas, or the very code has been taken from Unix systems. They didn't even try to hide the fact they were just porting Kerberos and adding Microsoft-only extenions to prevent compatibility.
Kerberos is what you should look very closely at. It's been around forever, and absolutely any program can use Kerberos for authentication, instead of passwords. Lots of programs like SSH/OpenSSH have native kerberos auth options built-in. Other programs like NFS have been modified slightly to work with Kerberos tokens, rather than IPs. In fact, with kerberos, you can encrypt all NFS data for security. But personally, I'd suggest using OpenAFS for remote filesystems. It's the ultimate in enterprise-quality remote filesystems (from IBM), the likes of which Microsoft can only dream about. It has it's own stripped-down kerberos server/client so you don't have to already have kerberos on your network. But if you do have kerberos, you tell it no to use it's own implimentation, and it'll integrate into your kerberos network seamlessly.
Although I strongly suggest kerberos, there are many other options as well. OpenLDAP has become fairly popular over the last year or two.
I can't really list everything that is possible, because there are so many options. With PAM, bsd auth, etc, any authentication method someone works up can be plugged-in, and used by any and all applications.
OpenSSH looks more and more like it's going to soon develop into it's own platform. Things like port-forwarding, X forwarding, and file transfer have been around for a long time, but now several virtual filesystem interfaces exist, OpenSSH is getting more features, like authpf for changing firewall rulesets when a user logs-in via SSH (perfect for wireless nets), SSH connection multiplexing, and other high-end features, SSH is a few steps away from becomming a public-key replacement for kerberos.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's only free if it:
[a] doesn't require a software purchase
[b] moves itself to my office
[c] installs itself
[d] doesn't disrupt the working day
[e] doesn't require training
All I can say is lets not move towards a business model where software costs 3 times what it does now, purely to make hardware free.
Imagine getting a free PC where you can't run any free software and paying £1,500 for Photoshop, £900 for Office and £300 for Windows.
It used to be a limit of 32 not 16 and since 2.6 that limit of 32 has been removed.
Mod that up
Even without ACLs, it is more than adequate for 99% of companies. Hell, most of them wouldn't want to spend the admin time required to manage anything more complex.
Perhaps, but then 99% of companies are 10 people. It's not enough for many larger companies. It's like saying relational databases are irellvent as you can write your program to simulate relations.
They're right, switching to linux costs more than upgrading windows once. BUT...
-*But who thought you upgrade windows only once??*
-I've seen companies switch back to previous versions of windows after finding out the new "features". That's twice the cost of single windows upgrade box in lost productivity.
-The lottery ticket nature of windows service pack bug fixes may mean "no winning this time. Try again?"
-You can't upgrade only once since the new security vulnerabilities will allow other people to "upgrade" you to being a spam server without your knowledge. Even the upgrade system itself may be a security vulnerability, as it takes twice as long to download fixes to your new fixes packages than it takes to become infected with 10+ spywares. Oh joy!
-You just KNOW it includes some odd incompatibilities with older windows/office file, forcing you to upgrade because Microsoft wants you upgrade something. They really hate it when you stick with windows 3.1 because it suits your needs...
-A well-done unixoid server can run 10 years without rebooting or being turned off. Think of the time your programmers are just sitting there, waiting for a reboot or upgrade!!! As unix-type servers DO NOT force its own products into obsolecense a 90's application will still work as good as new!
-You may check some boxes saying not to send anonymous usage info to microsoft, but it will NOT be always respected... does that count as spyware? How much time is wasted annually by the slowdown?
-Linux upgrades (and freeBSD upgrades too) can be entirely scripted. Start them when you leave work and it's ready the next morning. (requires a unixoid-competent person, but those are worth it).
-Some banks have switched to linux over security concerns. Linux may have a negative cost of operation cost for them. BSD is better at security of course but banks haven't noticed yet. (-;
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
Of course Linux computers are more expensive to upgrade!
You thought us spammers, virus makers, trojan-makers and spyware vendors would not lose money to how good Linux security is???
If you knew how long it takes to make a Linux spam server or spyware server out of your computer, you'd [censored] a fuse!!! (of course you'd do that more if you knew how long it takes on Windows but that's not the point).
Kudos for Microsoft forcing more upgrades than necessary thru old windows product obsolecense techniques. Not having my 17 spywares blocked by a fix made by a competitor's spyware installed during the user's install of the latest windows upgrade fixes for that patch is difficult, but rewarding! And oh the frustration of the competition when I fix security bugs on your computer so they can't get in, ha ha ha ha ha! (-;
If we didn't have microsoft, we'd have to invent it.
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
Yet, even a socially retarded cognitively challenged individual such as yourself was able to get Slashdot to work ... as evidenced by your post.
Hmmm. I should give Linux a try if its that easy.
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds
There are real reasons Linux is a Server OS first, and a Desktop OS second.
My affinity for hyperbole knows no bounds